Navigating electronic documents using domain discourse trees

ABSTRACT

Navigating text using an extended discourse tree. In an example, a method accesses an extended discourse tree that includes a first discourse tree for a first document and a second discourse tree for a second document. The method determines a first elementary discourse unit that is responsive to a query from a user device and a corresponding first position. The method further determines a set of navigation options including a first rhetorical relationship between the first elementary discourse unit and a second elementary discourse unit of the first discourse tree and a second rhetorical relationship between the first elementary discourse unit and a third elementary discourse unit of the second discourse tree. The method presents the rhetorical relationships to a user device. Responsive to receiving, from a user device, a selection of a rhetorical relationship, the method presents a corresponding elementary discourse unit to the user device.

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 16/145,644filed on Sep. 28, 2018, now allowed, which claims the benefit of U.S.Provisional Application No. 62/564,961, filed Sep. 28, 2017, which isincorporated by reference in its entirety, and U.S. ProvisionalApplication No. 62/729,335 filed on Sep. 10, 2018, which is incorporatedby reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure is generally concerned with linguistics. Morespecifically, this disclosure relates to using extended discourse treesto navigate one or more bodies of text.

STATEMENT AS TO RIGHTS TO INVENTIONS MADE UNDER FEDERALLY SPONSOREDRESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

NOT APPLICABLE

BACKGROUND

Autonomous agents (ChatBots) can be trained to answer user questions invarious applications such as providing customer service. Differentcontent is available for training autonomous agents, such as customerservice histories or other databases. But such content can containerroneous information, causing autonomous agents that are trained withthe information to provide erroneous answers to questions received fromusers.

Instead, formal documents can provide a greater level of accuracy.Examples of formal documents include process and procedure manuals for abank. But existing analysis techniques such as keyword-based searchsolutions fail to capture a relevancy of different parts of these formaldocuments, leading to erroneous results. More specifically,keyword-based solutions that determine whether a keyword is present failto account for dialogue in the text (a sequence of relatedinteractions). As such, autonomous agents that rely on such solutions donot properly address questions from users, lowering the effectiveness ofsuch agents and causing user frustration.

As such, improved solutions for searching and navigating within andbetween bodies of text are needed.

BRIEF SUMMARY

Generally, systems, devices, and methods of the present invention relateto extended discourse trees. In an example, a method accesses a firstdocument and a second document. The method creates a first discoursetree for a first paragraph of the first document. The method createssecond discourse tree for a second paragraph of the second document. Themethod determines an entity and a corresponding first elementarydiscourse unit from the first discourse tree by extracting a noun phrasefrom the discourse tree, classifying the noun phrase as either an entityor not an entity, and determining, in the second discourse tree, asecond elementary discourse unit that matches the first elementarydiscourse unit. The method, responsive to determining a rhetoricalrelationship between the first elementary discourse unit and the secondelementary discourse unit, links the first discourse tree and the seconddiscourse tree via the rhetorical relationship, thereby creating anextended discourse tree.

In an aspect, creating the first discourse tree and creating the seconddiscourse tree further includes accessing a sentence includingfragments. At least one fragment includes a verb and words, each wordincluding a role of the word within the fragment. Each fragment is anelementary discourse unit. The creating further includes generating adiscourse tree that represents rhetorical relationships between theplurality of fragments. The discourse tree includes nodes, eachnonterminal node representing a rhetorical relationship between two ofthe fragments, each terminal node of the nodes of the discourse tree isassociated with one of the plurality of fragments.

In an aspect, the classifying includes one or more of using a trainedmachine-learning model, a list of keywords, or searching an internetresource.

In an aspect, entity refers to one of a person, a company, a location, aname of a document, or a date or time.

In an aspect, the method includes responsive to not determining arhetorical relationship, creating a default rhetorical relationship oftype elaboration between the first elementary discourse unit and thesecond elementary discourse unit and linking the first discourse treeand the second discourse tree, thereby creating an extended discoursetree.

In an aspect, determining the rhetorical relationship further includescombining the first elementary discourse unit and the second elementarydiscourse unit into a temporary paragraph and determining the rhetoricalrelationship is found within the temporary paragraph by applyingdiscourse parsing to the temporary paragraph.

In an aspect, the entities are represented by either one or more phrasesor one or more elementary discourse units.

In an aspect, accessing the first document and the second documentincludes determining that a difference between a first content score forthe first document and a second content score for the second documentare within a threshold.

In an aspect, the first document and the second document are obtained byexecuting a user query of one or more documents.

In an aspect, the first document and the second document include textbased on a particular topic.

In an aspect, accessing the first document and the second documentincludes determining that a pre-existing link exists between the firstdocument and the second document.

In a further aspect, a method of navigating a body of text using anextended discourse tree includes accessing an extended discourse treerepresenting documents. The extended discourse tree includes a firstdiscourse tree for a first document and a second discourse tree for asecond document. The method further includes determining, from theextended discourse tree, a first elementary discourse unit that isresponsive to a query from a user device and a first position thatcorresponds to the first elementary discourse unit. The method furtherincludes determining, from the extended discourse tree, a set ofnavigation options including a first rhetorical relationship between thefirst elementary discourse unit and a second elementary discourse unitof the first discourse tree and a second rhetorical relationship betweenthe first elementary discourse unit and a third elementary discourseunit of the second discourse tree. The method further includespresenting the first and second rhetorical relationships to a userdevice. The method further includes, responsive to receiving, from auser device, a selection of the first rhetorical relationship,presenting the second elementary discourse unit to the user device, orresponsive to receiving, from the user device, a selection of the secondrhetorical relationship, presenting the third elementary discourse unitto the user device.

In an aspect, the method further includes, responsive to receiving, fromthe user device, an additional query, determining an additionalelementary discourse unit that is responsive to the additional query andpresenting the additional elementary discourse unit to the user device.

In an aspect, the determining the first elementary discourse unitfurther includes matching one or more keywords from the query in thefirst elementary discourse unit.

In an aspect, determining the first elementary discourse unit furtherincludes: generating a first parse tree for the query, generatingadditional parse trees for each of one or more elementary discourseunits, and responsive to determining that one of the additional parsetrees includes the first parse tree, selecting the elementary discourseunit corresponding to the one additional parse tree as the firstelementary discourse unit.

In an aspect, the first and second rhetorical relationships comprise oneof elaboration, enablement, condition, contrast, or attribution.

In an aspect, the above methods can be implemented on tangiblecomputer-readable media and/or operating within a computer processor andattached memory.

In an aspect, a method determines a rhetorical relationship between oneor more documents. The method accesses a first discourse treerepresenting a first document of a set of documents and a seconddiscourse tree representing a second document from the set of documents.The method obtains a reference extended discourse tree from a set ofextended discourse trees by applying the first discourse tree and thesecond discourse tree to a trained classification model. The trainedclassification model iterates through the set of extended discoursetrees to identify a first candidate discourse tree and a secondcandidate discourse tree. The first candidate discourse tree and thesecond candidate discourse tree are a best match for the first discoursetree and the second discourse tree. The method determines, from thereference extended discourse tree, one or more links between the firstreference discourse tree and the second reference discourse tree. Themethod propagates the one or more links to the first discourse tree andthe second discourse tree, thereby creating an extended discourse tree.

In an aspect, the method further determines, based on the one or morelinks, one or more rhetorical relationships between the first discoursetree and the extended tree and presents the rhetorical relationships toa user device.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows an exemplary rhetoric classification environment inaccordance with an aspect.

FIG. 2 depicts an example of a discourse tree in accordance with anaspect.

FIG. 3 depicts a further example of a discourse tree in accordance withan aspect.

FIG. 4 depicts illustrative schemas in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 5 depicts a node-link representation of the hierarchical binarytree in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 6 depicts an exemplary indented text encoding of the representationin FIG. 5 in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 7 depicts an exemplary DT for an example request about property taxin accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 8 depicts an exemplary response for the question represented inFIG. 7.

FIG. 9 illustrates a discourse tree for an official answer in accordancewith an aspect.

FIG. 10 illustrates a discourse tree for a raw answer in accordance withan aspect.

FIG. 11 depicts an example of an extended discourse tree, in accordancewith an aspect.

FIG. 12 depicts a flowchart of an example of a process for creating anextended discourse tree, in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 13 also depicts relationships between textual units of documents atdifferent levels of granularity, in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 14 depicts a flowchart of an example of a process for using anextended discourse tree to navigate between documents, in accordancewith an aspect.

FIG. 15 depicts an example of an autonomous agent using an extendeddiscourse tree to answer user questions, in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 16 depicts an example of an extended discourse tree, in accordancewith an aspect.

FIG. 17 depicts a comparison between navigation using a search engineand navigation using an autonomous agent enabled with extended discoursetrees, in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 18 depicts a simplified diagram of a distributed system forimplementing one of the aspects.

FIG. 19 is a simplified block diagram of components of a systemenvironment by which services provided by the components of an aspectsystem may be offered as cloud services in accordance with an aspect.

FIG. 20 illustrates an exemplary computer system, in which variousaspects of the present invention may be implemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

As discussed above, existing keyword-based solutions fail to capture arelevancy for different parts of text within a body of text, resultingin autonomous agents that attempt to imitate human dialogue without afull understanding of communicative discourse. Such solutions causeautonomous agents to emit a random sequence of utterances, makingaccomplishing a task or providing a recommendation difficult.

In contrast, aspects disclosed herein provide technical improvements tothe areas of computer-implemented linguistics and text navigation. Morespecifically, certain aspects create extended discourse trees thatrepresent not only rhetorical relationships between discourse units of aparticular document but also rhetorical relationships between entitiesidentified across multiple documents. In so doing, certain aspectsprovide a cohesive discourse flow for interaction with an autonomousagent or for searching and navigating a body of text that is organizedor partitioned into different documents.

For example, a discourse navigation application builds individualdiscourse trees for different textual units (e.g., paragraphs), performsdiscourse analysis to determine rhetorical relations between thediscourse trees, and creates a single extended discourse tree therefrom.The extended discourse tree includes inter-document rhetoric relationsin addition to intra-document rhetorical relations within an individualdiscourse tree. The discourse navigation application can then use theextended discourse tree to facilitate an autonomous agent or search.

Discourse trees originate from Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). RSTmodels a logical organization of text employed by a writer, relying onrelations between parts of text. RST simulates text coherence by forminga hierarchical, connected structure of texts via discourse trees.Rhetoric relations are split into the classes of coordinate andsubordinate; these relations hold across two or more text spans andtherefore implement coherence. These text spans are called elementarydiscourse units (EDUs). Clauses in a sentence and sentences in a textare logically connected by the author. The meaning of a given sentenceis related to that of the previous and the following sentences.

The leaves of a discourse tree correspond to EDUs, the contiguous atomictext spans. Adjacent EDUs are connected by coherence relations (e.g.,attribution, sequence), forming higher-level discourse units. The leavesof a particular EDU are logically related. This relationship is referredto as the coherence structure of the text. Example relations includeelaboration and enablement. As used herein, “nuclearity” refers to whichtext segment, fragment, or span, is more central to a writer's purpose.A “nucleus” refers to a span of text that is more central to a writer'spurpose than a “satellite,” which is less central to a writer's purpose.

The following non-limiting example is provided to introduce certainaspects. A discourse navigation application executing on a computingdevice accesses a set of input documents. The discourse navigationapplication creates an individual discourse tree for each paragraph ofeach document. Each discourse tree identifies rhetorical relationsbetween entities, thereby facilitating navigation between entities(e.g., topics such as places, things, people). For example, a discoursetree enables a user to navigate from text describing California to textthat includes information about cities in California such as SanFrancisco based on an identification of a common entity (California) andtext that elaborates further on that entity (San Francisco).

In addition to the determined rhetorical relations within a particulardiscourse tree, the discourse navigation application performs additionaldiscourse analysis between discourse trees and creates links betweendocuments based on the analysis. More specifically, the discoursenavigation application identifies entities in a first discourse tree(e.g., representing a first document), identifies any such entities in asecond discourse tree (e.g., representing a second document), thendetermines rhetorical relationship between corresponding entities. Inthis manner, the discourse navigation application enables navigationbetween entities represented in multiple documents.

For example, the discourse navigation application relates a paragraph ofa first document that discusses baseball with a second paragraph in asecond document that elaborates on baseball by providing additionalinformation, a third paragraph in a third document that providesexamples of baseball teams such as Atlanta Braves, and so on.

In another example, the discourse navigation application can identify arhetorical relation of contrast can be used to provide the user withcounterpoints. For example, an entity in the first document takes aposition on a topic, e.g., “some experts believe that climate change iscaused by human activity,” is contrasted by text related to the entityin a second document “but a minority of experts believe that climatechange is cyclical.” Extended discourse trees can represent multiplerhetorical relations between documents including background, justify,motivation, etc.

Certain aspects use trained machine-learning models to constructadditional extended discourse trees. A trained classification model cancreate an extended discourse tree from discourse trees for text that isin a first domain by using a set of extended discourse trees for textthat is in a second domain. For example, an extended discourse tree canbe crated from multiple discourse trees from legal documents by using aclassification model that is trained with extended discourse trees fromcurrent affairs.

Certain Definitions

As used herein, “textual unit” refers to a unit of text. Examplesinclude an elementary discourse unit, phrase, fragment, sentence,paragraph, page, and document.

As used herein, “entity” refers to something with a distinct andindependent existence. An entity may be used in a textual unit. Examplesof entities include a person, a company, a location, a thing, a name ofa document, or a date or time.

As used herein, “rhetorical structure theory” is an area of research andstudy that provided a theoretical basis upon which the coherence of adiscourse could be analyzed.

As used herein, “discourse tree” or “DT” refers to a structure thatrepresents the rhetorical relations for a sentence of part of asentence.

As used herein, a “rhetorical relation,” “rhetorical relationship,” or“coherence relation” or “discourse relation” refers to how two segmentsof discourse are logically connected to one another. Examples ofrhetorical relations include elaboration, contrast, and attribution.

As used herein, a “sentence fragment,” or “fragment” is a part of asentence that can be divided from the rest of the sentence. A fragmentis an elementary discourse unit. For example, for the sentence “Dutchaccident investigators say that evidence points to pro-Russian rebels asbeing responsible for shooting down the plane,” two fragments are “Dutchaccident investigators say that evidence points to pro-Russian rebels”and “as being responsible for shooting down the plane.” A fragment can,but need not, include a verb.

As used herein, “index” is a table, data structure, pointer, or othermechanism that links two keywords, data, or parts of text. An index caninclude searchable content. Examples of an index include an inverseindex, a searchable index, and a string match. An inverse index is alsosearchable.

Turning now to the figures, FIG. 1 shows an exemplary documentnavigation environment in accordance with an aspect. FIG. 1 depictsinput documents 110 a-n, computing device 101, user device 170, and datanetwork 104.

Computing device 101 includes discourse navigation application 102,extended discourse tree 130, machine learning model 120 and trainingdata 125. In an example, discourse navigation application 102 receivesinput documents 110 a-n, creates a discourse tree for each inputdocument 110 a-n, determines entities in the generated discourse trees,determines rhetorical relations between entities and creates extendeddiscourse tree 130. Computing device can also receive queries from userdevice 170 and service those queries by navigating extended discoursetree 130.

User device 170 can be any mobile device such as a mobile phone, smartphone, tablet, laptop, smart watch, and the like. User device 170communicates with computing device 101 via data network 104 to computingdevice 101 or to remote server. Data network 104 can be any public orprivate network, wired or wireless network, Wide Area Network, LocalArea Network, or the Internet. The functionality of user device 170 canbe implemented in software, e.g., via an application or a webapplication. User device 170 includes display 171. Examples of display171 include a computer screen, a mobile device screen, an LCD, orLED-backlit display, etc.

Display 171 depicts three messages 181-183. Continuing the example,discourse navigation application 102 receives message 181 from userdevice 170. Message 181 is a user query that reads “can I use one creditcard to pay for another?” Discourse navigation application 102 accessesextended discourse tree 130 and determines that entity “credit card”exists in the discourse tree of a first document. Discourse navigationapplication 102 subsequently determines that several differentpossibilities exist that further elaborate on the entity “credit card.”Specifically, discourse navigation application 102 determines that nounphrases “balance transfer,” “using funds on a checking account,” and“canceling your credit card” are each linked from the entity “creditcard,” and are found in one or more other discourse trees withinextended discourse tree 130. Accordingly, discourse navigationapplication 102 presents message 182 on the user device. In response,the user selects “canceling,” as depicted by message 183, and in turn,the discourse navigation application follows the rhetorical relationbetween the entity “credit card” and “canceling your credit card.”

Discourse navigation application 102 can continue this process, whichfacilitates a convergence in this answer navigation session becauseadditional answers can be suggested based on additional clarificationsubmitted after message 182 is read by the user. Additional answers ortext can be suggested based on a particular rhetorical relation. Forexample, presenting text that is related by an elaboration relation isuseful to a user to elaborate on a topic, whereas presenting text thatis related by a contrast relation provides a counterpoint to a user. Inthis manner, the presented topics give the user a chance to assess how arequest was understood and to learn some basic knowledge that isassociated with the question, resulting in improved convergence overtraditional search-engine based solutions. For example, documentnavigation option 102 may present options such as “bad decisions,”“breakups,” or “out of financial reach.”

Rhetoric Structure Theory and Discourse Trees

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. For example,linguistics can include the structure of a sentence (syntax), e.g.,subject-verb-object, the meaning of a sentence (semantics), e.g. dogbites man vs. man bites dog, and what speakers do in conversation, i.e.,discourse analysis or the analysis of language beyond the sentence.

The theoretical underpinnings of discourse, Rhetoric Structure Theory(RST), can be attributed to Mann, William and Thompson, Sandra,“Rhetorical structure theory: A Theory of Text organization,”Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 8(3):243-281,1988. Similar to how the syntax and semantics of programming languagetheory helped enable modern software compilers, RST helped enabled theanalysis of discourse. More specifically RST posits structural blocks onat least two levels, a first level such as nuclearity and rhetoricalrelations, and a second level of structures or schemas. Discourseparsers or other computer software can parse text into a discourse tree.

Rhetoric Relations

As discussed, aspects described herein use rhetorical relations anddiscourse trees. Rhetorical relations can be described in differentways. For example, Mann and Thompson describe twenty-three possiblerelations. C. Mann, William & Thompson, Sandra. (1987) (“Mann andThompson”). Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.Other numbers of relations are possible. Table 2 below lists differentrhetorical relations.

TABLE 2 Relation Name Nucleus Satellite Antithesis ideas favored by theideas disfavored by author the author Background text whose text forfacilitating understanding is being understanding facilitatedCircumstance text expressing the an interpretive context events or ideasof situation or time occurring in the interpretive context Concessionsituation affirmed by situation which is appar- author entlyinconsistent but also affirmed by author Condition action or situationconditioning situation whose occurrence results from the occurrence ofthe conditioning situation Elaboration basic information additionalinformation Enablement an action information intended to aid the readerin per- forming an action Evaluation a situation an evaluative commentabout the situation Evidence a claim information intended to increasethe reader's belief in the claim Interpretation a situation aninterpretation of the situation Justify text information supporting thewriter's right to express the text Motivation an action informationintended to increase the reader's desire to perform the action Non- asituation another situation which volitional causes that one, but not byCause anyone's deliberate action Non- a situation another situationwhich is volitional caused by that one, but not Result by anyone'sdeliberate action Otherwise action or situation conditioning situation(anti whose occurrence conditional) results from the lack of occurrenceof the conditioning situation Purpose an intended situation the intentbehind the situation Restatement a situation a reexpression of thesituation Solutionhood a situation or method a question, request,problem, supporting full or partial or other expressed need satisfactionof the need Summary text a short summary of that text Volitional asituation another situation which Cause causes that one, by someone'sdeliberate action Volitional a situation another situation which isResult caused by that one, by someone's deliberate action

Some empirical studies postulate that the majority of text is structuredusing nucleus-satellite relations. See Mann and Thompson. But otherrelations do not carry a definite selection of a nucleus. Examples ofsuch relations are shown in Table 3 below.

TABLE 3 Relation Name Span Other Span Contrast One alternate The otheralternate Joint (unconstrained) (unconstrained) List An item A next itemSequence An item A next item

FIG. 2 depicts an example of a discourse tree in accordance with anaspect. FIG. 2 includes discourse tree 200. Discourse tree includes textspan 201, text span 202, text span 203, relation 210 and relation 211.The numbers in FIG. 2 correspond to the three text spans. FIG. 2corresponds to the following example text with three text spans numbered1, 2, 3:

1. Honolulu, Hi. will be site of the 2017 Conference on Hawaiian History

2. It is expected that 200 historians from the U.S. and Asia will attend

3. The conference will be concerned with how the Polynesians sailed toHawaii

For example, relation 210, or elaboration, describes the relationshipbetween text span 201 and text span 202. Relation 210 depicts therelationship, elaboration, between text span 203 and 204. As depicted,text spans 202 and 203 elaborate further on text span 201. In the aboveexample, given a goal of notifying readers of a conference, text span 1is the nucleus. Text spans 2 and 3 provide more detail about theconference. In FIG. 2, a horizontal number, e.g., 1-3, 1, 2, 3 covers aspan of text (possibly made up of further spans); a vertical linesignals the nucleus or nuclei; and a curve represents a rhetoricrelation (elaboration) and the direction of the arrow points from thesatellite to the nucleus. If the text span only functions as a satelliteand not as a nuclei, then deleting the satellite would still leave acoherent text. If from FIG. 2 one deletes the nucleus, then text spans 2and 3 are difficult to understand.

FIG. 3 depicts a further example of a discourse tree in accordance withan aspect. FIG. 3 includes components 301 and 302, text spans 305-307,relation 310 and relation 311. Relation 310, enablement, describes therelationship ibetween components 306 and 305, and 307, and 305. FIG. 3refers to the following text spans:

1. The new Tech Report abstracts are now in the journal area of thelibrary near the abridged dictionary.

2. Please sign your name by any means that you would be interested inseeing.

3. Last day for sign-ups is 31 May.

As can be seen, relation 310 depicts the relationship between entity 307and 306, which is enablement. FIG. 3 illustrates that while nuclei canbe nested, there exists only one most nuclear text span.

Constructing a Discourse Tree

Discourse trees can be generated using different methods. A simpleexample of a method to construct a DT bottom up is:

(1) Divide the discourse text into units by:

-   -   (a) Unit size may vary, depending on the goals of the analysis    -   (b) Typically, units are clauses

(2) Examine each unit, and its neighbors. Is there a relation holdingbetween them?

(3) If yes, then mark that relation.

(4) If not, the unit might be at the boundary of a higher-levelrelation. Look at relations holding between larger units (spans).

(5) Continue until all the units in the text are accounted for.

Mann and Thompson also describe the second level of building blockstructures called schemas applications. In RST, rhetoric relations arenot mapped directly onto texts; they are fitted onto structures calledschema applications, and these in turn are fitted to text. Schemaapplications are derived from simpler structures called schemas (asshown by FIG. 4). Each schema indicates how a particular unit of text isdecomposed into other smaller text units. A rhetorical structure tree orDT is a hierarchical system of schema applications. A schema applicationlinks a number of consecutive text spans, and creates a complex textspan, which can in turn be linked by a higher-level schema application.RST asserts that the structure of every coherent discourse can bedescribed by a single rhetorical structure tree, whose top schemacreates a span encompassing the whole discourse.

FIG. 4 depicts illustrative schemas in accordance with an aspect. FIG. 4shows a joint schema is a list of items consisting of nuclei with nosatellites. FIG. 4 depicts schemas 401-406. Schema 401 depicts acircumstance relation between text spans 410 and 411. Scheme 402 depictsa sequence relation between text spans 420 and 421 and a sequencerelation between text spans 421 and 422. Schema 403 depicts a contrastrelation between text spans 430 and 431. Schema 404 depicts a jointrelationship between text spans 440 and 441. Schema 405 depicts amotivation relationship between 450 and 451, and an enablementrelationship between 452 and 451. Schema 406 depicts joint relationshipbetween text spans 460 and 462. An example of a joint scheme is shown inFIG. 4 for the three text spans below:

1. Skies will be partly sunny in the New York metropolitan area today.

2. It will be more humid, with temperatures in the middle 80's.

3. Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with the low temperature between 65and 70.

While FIGS. 2-4 depict some graphical representations of a discoursetree, other representations are possible.

FIG. 5 depicts a node-link representation of the hierarchical binarytree in accordance with an aspect. As can be seen from FIG. 5, theleaves of a DT correspond to contiguous non-overlapping text spanscalled Elementary Discourse Units (EDUs). Adjacent EDUs are connected byrelations (e.g., elaboration, attribution . . . ) and form largerdiscourse units, which are also connected by relations. “Discourseanalysis in RST involves two sub-tasks: discourse segmentation is thetask of identifying the EDUs, and discourse parsing is the task oflinking the discourse units into a labeled tree.” See Joty, Shafiq R andGiuseppe Carenini, Raymond T Ng, and Yashar Mehdad. 2013. Combiningintra- and multi-sentential rhetorical parsing for document-leveldiscourse analysis. In ACL (1), pages 486-496.

FIG. 5 depicts text spans that are leaves, or terminal nodes, on thetree, each numbered in the order they appear in the full text, shown inFIG. 6. FIG. 5 includes tree 500. Tree 500 includes, for example, nodes501-507. The nodes indicate relationships. Nodes are non-terminal, suchas node 501, or terminal, such as nodes 502-507. As can be seen, nodes503 and 504 are related by a joint relationship. Nodes 502, 505, 506,and 508 are nuclei. The dotted lines indicate that the branch or textspan is a satellite. The relations are nodes in gray boxes.

FIG. 6 depicts an exemplary indented text encoding of the representationin FIG. 5 in accordance with an aspect. FIG. 6 includes text 600 andtext sequences 602-604. Text 600 is presented in a manner more amenableto computer programming. Text sequence 602 corresponds to node 502,sequence 603 corresponds to node 503, and sequence 604 corresponds tonode 504. In FIG. 6, “N” indicates a nucleus and “S” indicates asatellite.

Examples of Discourse Parsers

Automatic discourse segmentation can be performed with differentmethods. For example, given a sentence, a segmentation model identifiesthe boundaries of the composite elementary discourse units by predictingwhether a boundary should be inserted before each particular token inthe sentence. For example, one framework considers each token in thesentence sequentially and independently. In this framework, thesegmentation model scans the sentence token by token, and uses a binaryclassifier, such as a support vector machine or logistic regression, topredict whether it is appropriate to insert a boundary before the tokenbeing examined. In another example, the task is a sequential labelingproblem. Once text is segmented into elementary discourse units,sentence-level discourse parsing can be performed to construct thediscourse tree. Machine learning techniques can be used.

In one aspect of the present invention, two Rhetorical Structure Theory(RST) discourse parsers are used: CoreNLPProcessor which relies onconstituent syntax, and FastNLPProcessor which uses dependency syntax.See Surdeanu, Mihai & Hicks, Thomas & Antonio Valenzuela-Escarcega,Marco. Two Practical Rhetorical Structure Theory Parsers. (2015).

In addition, the above two discourse parsers, i.e., CoreNLPProcessor andFastNLPProcessor use Natural Language Processing (NLP) for syntacticparsing. For example, the Stanford CoreNLP gives the base forms ofwords, their parts of speech, whether they are names of companies,people, etc., normalize dates, times, and numeric quantities, mark upthe structure of sentences in terms of phrases and syntacticdependencies, indicate which noun phrases refer to the same entities.Practically, RST is a still theory that may work in many cases ofdiscourse, but in some cases, it may not work. There are many variablesincluding, but not limited to, what EDU's are in a coherent text, i.e.,what discourse segmenters are used, what relations inventory is used andwhat relations are selected for the EDUs, the corpus of documents usedfor training and testing, and even what parsers are used. So forexample, in Surdeanu, et al., “Two Practical Rhetorical Structure TheoryParsers,” paper cited above, tests must be run on a particular corpususing specialized metrics to determine which parser gives betterperformance. Thus unlike computer language parsers which givepredictable results, discourse parsers (and segmenters) can giveunpredictable results depending on the training and/or test text corpus.Thus, discourse trees are a mixture of the predicable arts (e.g.,compilers) and the unpredictable arts (e.g., like chemistry wereexperimentation is needed to determine what combinations will give youthe desired results).

In order to objectively determine how good a Discourse analysis is, aseries of metrics are being used, e.g., Precision/Recall/F1 metrics fromDaniel Marcu, “The Theory and Practice of Discourse Parsing andSummarization,” MIT Press, (2000). Precision, or positive predictivevalue is the fraction of informative instances among the retrievedinstances, while recall (also known as sensitivity) is the fraction ofinformative instances that have been retrieved over the total amount ofinformative instances. Both precision and recall are therefore based onan understanding and measure of relevance. Suppose a computer programfor recognizing dogs in photographs identifies eight dogs in a picturecontaining 12 dogs and some cats. Of the eight dogs identified, fiveactually are dogs (true positives), while the rest are cats (falsepositives). The program's precision is 5/8 while its recall is 5/12.When a search engine returns 30 pages only 20 of which were informativewhile failing to return 40 additional informative pages, its precisionis 20/30=⅔ while its recall is 20/60=⅓. Therefore, in this case,precision is ‘how useful the search results are’, and recall is ‘howcomplete the results are.’” The F1 score (also F-score or F-measure) isa measure of a test's accuracy. It considers both the precision and therecall of the test to compute the score:F1=2×((precision×recall)/(precision+recall)) and is the harmonic mean ofprecision and recall. The F1 score reaches its best value at 1 (perfectprecision and recall) and worst at 0.

Analyzing Request and Response Pairs

FIG. 7 depicts an exemplary discourse tree for an example request aboutproperty tax in accordance with an aspect. The node labels are therelations and the arrowed line points to the satellite. The nucleus is asolid line. FIG. 7 depicts discourse tree 700, which represents thefollowing text.

Request: “My husbands' grandmother gave him his grandfather's truck. Shesigned the title over but due to my husband having unpaid fines on hislicense, he was not able to get the truck put in his name. I wanted toput in my name and paid the property tax and got insurance for thetruck. By the time it came to sending off the title and getting the tag,I didn't have the money to do so. Now, due to circumstances, I am notgoing to be able to afford the truck. I went to the insurance place andwas refused a refund. I am just wondering that since I am not going tohave a tag on this truck, is it possible to get the property taxrefunded?”

Response: “The property tax is assessed on property that you own. Justbecause you chose to not register it does not mean that you don't ownit, so the tax is not refundable. Even if you have not titled thevehicle yet, you still own it within the boundaries of the tax district,so the tax is payable. Note that all states give you a limited amount oftime to transfer title and pay the use tax. If you apply late, therewill be penalties on top of the normal taxes and fees. You don't need toregister it at the same time, but you absolutely need to title it withinthe period of time stipulated in state law.”

As can be seen in FIG. 7, analyzing the above text results in thefollowing. “My husbands' grandmother gave him his grandfather's truck”is elaborated by “She signed the title over but due to my husband”elaborated by “having unpaid fines on his license, he was not able toget the truck put in his name.” which is elaborated by “I wanted to putin my name,” “and paid the property tax”, and “and got insurance for thetruck.”

“My husbands' grandmother gave him his grandfather's truck. She signedthe title over but due to my husband having unpaid fines on his license,he was not able to get the truck put in his name. I wanted to put in myname and paid the property tax and got insurance for the truck.” iselaborated by;

“I didn't have the money” elaborated by “to do so” contrasted with

“By the time” elaborated by “it came to sending off the title”

“and getting the tag”

“My husbands' grandmother gave him his grandfather's truck. She signedthe title over but due to my husband having unpaid fines on his license,he was not able to get the truck put in his name. I wanted to put in myname and paid the property tax and got insurance for the truck. By thetime it came to sending off the title and getting the tag, I didn't havethe money to do so” is contrasted with

“Now, due to circumstances,” elaborated with “I am not going to be ableto afford the truck.” which is elaborated with

“I went to the insurance place”

“and was refused a refund”

“My husbands' grandmother gave him his grandfather's truck. She signedthe title over but due to my husband having unpaid fines on his license,he was not able to get the truck put in his name. I wanted to put in myname and paid the property tax and got insurance for the truck. By thetime it came to sending off the title and getting the tag, I didn't havethe money to do so. Now, due to circumstances, I am not going to be ableto afford the truck. I went to the insurance place and was refused arefund.” is elaborated with

“I am just wondering that since I am not going to have a tag on thistruck, is it possible to get the property tax refunded?”

“I am just wondering” has attribution to

“that” is the same unit as “is it possible to get the property taxrefunded?” which has condition “since I am not going to have a tag onthis truck”

As can be seen, the main subject of the topic is “Property tax on acar”. The question includes the contradiction: on one hand, allproperties are taxable, and on the other hand, the ownership is somewhatincomplete. A good response has to address both topic of the questionand clarify the inconsistency. To do that, the responder is making evenstronger claim concerning the necessity to pay tax on whatever is ownedirrespectively of the registration status. This example is a member ofpositive training set from our Yahoo! Answers evaluation domain. Themain subject of the topic is “Property tax on a car”. The questionincludes the contradiction: on one hand, all properties are taxable, andon the other hand, the ownership is somewhat incomplete. A goodanswer/response has to address both topic of the question and clarifythe inconsistency. The reader can observe that since the questionincludes rhetoric relation of contrast, the answer has to match it witha similar relation to be convincing. Otherwise, this answer would lookincomplete even to those who are not domain experts.

FIG. 8 depicts an exemplary response for the question represented inFIG. 7, according to certain aspects of the present invention. FIG. 8depicts discourse tree 800. The central nucleus is “the property tax isassessed on property” elaborated by “that you own”. “The property tax isassessed on property that you own” is also a nucleus elaborated by “Justbecause you chose to not register it does not mean that you don't ownit, so the tax is not refundable. Even if you have not titled thevehicle yet, you still own it within the boundaries of the tax district,so the tax is payable. Note that all states give you a limited amount oftime to transfer title and pay the use tax.”

The nucleus “The property tax is assessed on property that you own. Justbecause you chose to not register it does not mean that you don't ownit, so the tax is not refundable. Even if you have not titled thevehicle yet, you still own it within the boundaries of the tax district,so the tax is payable. Note that all states give you a limited amount oftime to transfer title and pay the use tax.” is elaborated by “therewill be penalties on top of the normal taxes and fees” with condition“If you apply late,” which in turn is elaborated by the contrast of “butyou absolutely need to title it within the period of time stipulated instate law.” and “You don't need to register it at the same time.”.

Comparing the DT of FIG. 7 and DT of FIG. 8, enables a determination ofhow well matched the response (FIG. 8) is to the request (FIG. 7). Insome aspects of the present invention, the above framework is used, atleast in part, to determine the DTs for the request/response and therhetoric agreement between the DTs.

In another example, the question “What does The Investigative Committeeof the Russian Federation do” has at least two answers, for example, anofficial answer or an actual answer.

FIG. 9 illustrates a discourse tree for an official answer in accordancewith an aspect. FIG. 9 depicts a discourse tree 900 for an officialanswer, or mission statement, that states “The Investigative Committeeof the Russian Federation is the main federal investigating authoritywhich operates as Russia's Anti-corruption agency and has statutoryresponsibility for inspecting the police forces, combating policecorruption and police misconduct, is responsible for conductinginvestigations into local authorities and federal governmental bodies.”

FIG. 10 illustrates a discourse tree 1000 for a raw answer in accordancewith an aspect. As depicted in FIG. 10, another, perhaps more honest,answer states that “Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation issupposed to fight corruption. However, top-rank officers of theInvestigative Committee of the Russian Federation are charged withcreation of a criminal community. Not only that, but their involvementin large bribes, money laundering, obstruction of justice, abuse ofpower, extortion, and racketeering has been reported. Due to theactivities of these officers, dozens of high-profile cases including theones against criminal lords had been ultimately ruined.”

The choice of answers depends on context. Rhetoric structure allowsdifferentiating between “official”, “politically correct”,template-based answers and “actual”, “raw”, “reports from the field”, or“controversial” answers. (See FIGS. 9 and 10). Sometimes, the questionitself can give a hint about which category of answers is expected. If aquestion is formulated as a factoid or definitional one, without asecond meaning, then the first category of answers is suitable.Otherwise, if a question has the meaning “tell me what it really is,”then the second category is appropriate. In general, after extracting arhetoric structure from a question, selecting a suitable answer thatwould have a similar, matching, or complementary rhetoric structure iseasier.

The official answer is based on elaboration and joints, which areneutral in terms of controversy a text might contain (See FIG. 9). Atthe same time, the row answer includes the contrast relation. Thisrelation is extracted between the phrase for what an agent is expectedto do and what this agent was discovered to have done.

Extended Discourse Trees

Aspects of the present disclosure facilitate navigating an extendeddiscourse tree built from a corpus of relevant content such as multipledocuments. Extended discourse trees are a combination of discourse treesof individual textual units (e.g., paragraphs) from multiple documents.Aspects use extended discourse trees to not only allow zooming in basedon keywords but also on navigating in or out or back based on howdocuments are interconnected, thereby enabling an autonomous agent toprovide content navigation such as guided search.

FIG. 11 depicts an example of an extended discourse tree, in accordancewith an aspect. FIG. 11 depicts extended discourse tree 1100. Extendeddiscourse tree 1100 includes groups 1100, 1120, 1130, 1140, and 1150.Each group includes a document and a discourse tree generated from thedocument. For example, group 1110 includes discourse tree 1111 anddocument 1112, group 1120 includes discourse tree 1121 and document1122, and so on.

In addition to links between within particular discourse trees, e.g.,discourse trees 1111, 1121, 1131, 1141, and 1151, extended discoursetree 1100 includes inter-discourse tree links 1161-1164 and associatedinter-document links 1171-1174. As explained further with respect toFIG. 12, discourse navigation application 102 constructs discourse trees1111-1115. Discourse tree 1111 represents document 1112, discourse tree1121 represents document 1122, and so on. Extended discourse tree 1100is built by building a discourse tree for each paragraph or document.

Inter-discourse tree link 1161 connects discourse tree 1111 and 1121,inter-discourse tree link 1162 connects discourse tree 1121 and 1131,inter-discourse tree link 1163 connects discourse tree 1111 and 1141,and inter-discourse tree link 1164 connects discourse tree 1121 and1151. Based on inter-discourse tree links 1161-1164, discoursenavigation application 102 creates inter-document links 1171, 1172,1173, and 1174, which correspond to inter-discourse tree links 1161,1162, 1163, and 1164 respectively. Inter-document links 1171-1174 can beused to navigate documents 1112, 1122, 1132, 1142, and 1152.

Discourse navigation application 102 determines one or more entitieswithin a first discourse tree of the discourse trees 1111-1115. Examplesof entities include places, things, people, or companies. Discoursenavigation application 102 then identifies the same entities present inthe other discourse trees. Based on the determined entities, discoursenavigation application 102 determines a rhetorical relationship betweeneach matching entity.

For example, if an entity “San Francisco” occurs in document 1112, e.g.,“San Francisco is in California,” and document 1122 further explainsthat “San Francisco has a moderate climate but can be quite windy,”discourse navigation application 102 would determine that the rhetoricalrelationship between the entity “San Francisco” is one of “elaboration”and mark links 1161 and 1171 as “elaboration.” Continuing the example,discourse navigation application 102 determines links 1162-1164 andcorresponding links 1172-1174 based on determined rhetorical relations.Discourse navigation application 102 combines the discourse trees of theparagraphs of the documents to form extended discourse tree 1100.

By using the links in extended discourse tree 1100, discourse navigationapplication can navigate between paragraphs of the same document orbetween documents, e.g., document 1112 and 1122. For example, if a useris interested in more information on a particular topic, discoursenavigation application 102 navigates through an elaboration rhetoricalrelation from nucleus to satellite within a paragraph or an elaborationrhetorical relation hyperlink to a document that offers more specificinformation on the topic.

Conversely, if a user decides that a suggested topic is not exactly whatis needed, the user can return to a higher-level view of the documents(e.g., from satellite to nucleus, or from narrow document to broaddocument). In turn, discourse navigation application 102 navigates anelaboration relationship in the opposite order, i.e., from a satelliteto the nucleus at either the paragraph or between documents. Similarly,discourse navigation application 102 facilitates other navigationoptions such as relying on contrast or condition rhetoricalrelationships for exploring controversial topics.

To build rhetoric links between text fragments in different paragraphsor documents, discourse navigation application 102 identifies arelationship between entities by using a fictitious text fragment, or atemporary paragraph, from the respective text fragments of the originalparagraph and perform coreference analysis and discourse parsing on theparagraph.

FIG. 12 depicts a flowchart of an example of a process 1200 for creatingan extended discourse tree, in accordance with an aspect. The input ofprocess 1200 is a set of documents, and an output is an extendeddiscourse tree, which is encoded as a regular discourse tree with thelabels of document identification for each node. For example purposes,process 1200 is described with respect to two documents, e.g., documents110 a-b, but process 1200 can use any number of documents.

At block 1201, process 1200 involves accessing a first document and asecond document. Examples of documents include texts, books, newsarticles, and other electronic documents.

In an aspect, discourse navigation application 102 selects documentsthat are similar or identical in topic. For example, discoursenavigation application 102 can determines a content score for eachdocument, e.g., by determining similarity in keywords between documents.For example, discourse navigation application 102 determines that afirst content score for the first document and a second content scorefor the second document are within a threshold and based on thesimilarity, uses the first and second documents to create an extendeddiscourse tree.

In an aspect, discourse navigation application 102 performs documentanalysis that includes the generation of document trees representing thesentential and phrasal structure of the document. Rhetorical relationsassociated with an inter-document link can determine differentnavigation scenarios. By default, elaboration can be used. Discoursenavigation application 102 offer a link to another document that isrelated by an attribution relation if the user is interested inquestions such as “why,” or “how.” Discourse navigation application 102can offer a link to a document that is related by a contrast relation ifa user expresses disagreement with an originally presented document orasks for a document that provides a counterpoint to the currentdocument.

In a further aspect, discourse navigation application 102 obtains thefirst and second document by executing a user query. Examples of userqueries include “climate change” or “documents on linguistics.”

At block 1202, process 1200 involves creating a first discourse tree fora first paragraph of a first document. Discourse navigation application102 accesses a paragraph from the first document. Each sentence of theparagraph includes fragments, or elementary discourse units. At leastone fragment includes a verb. Each word in the fragment includes role,e.g., the function, of the word within the fragment. Discoursenavigation application 102 generates a discourse tree that representsrhetorical relationships between the fragments. The discourse treeincludes multiple nodes, each nonterminal node representing a rhetoricalrelationship between two fragments and each terminal node associatedwith one of the fragments. Discourse navigation application 102continues in this manner, building a set of discourse trees for eachparagraph in the first document. Process 1200 is described with respectto a paragraph as a unit of text but other sizes of text can be used.

At block 1203, process 1200 involves creating second discourse tree fora second paragraph of a second document. At block 1203, process 1200performs substantially similar steps for the second document asperformed for the first document at block 1202. In the case that process1200 creates an extended discourse tree for more than two documents,process 1200 performs the functions described at block 1202 on multipledocuments. Process 1200 can iterate through all pairs of discourse treesin the set of discourse trees where each discourse tree corresponds to adocument. Pairs of discourse trees can be represented by:

-   -   DT_(i) and DT_(j) ∈DTA.

At block 1204, process 1200 involves determining an entity and acorresponding first elementary discourse unit from the first discoursetree. Various methods can be used such as keyword processing (searchingfor one of a list of predefined keywords in the sentences of the firstdocument), using a trained machine-learning model, or searching aninternet resource. Discourse navigation application 102 identifies allnoun phrases and named entities in the discourse trees DT_(i) andDT_(j).

In an example, discourse navigation application 102 extracts a nounphrase from the discourse tree. Discourse navigation application 102then classifies the noun phrase as either (i) an entity or (ii) not anentity by using a trained machine learning model.

At block 1205, process 1200 involves determining, in the seconddiscourse tree, a second elementary discourse unit that matches thefirst elementary discourse unit. More specifically, discourse navigationapplication 102 computes overlap and identify common entities E_(i,j)between DT_(i) and DT_(j). Discourse navigation application 102establishes relationships between occurrences of entities in E_(i,j)such as equals, sub-entity, or part-of. Discourse navigation application102 then forms inter-paragraph rhetorical links R(E_(i,j)) for eachentity pair occurrence in E_(i,j).

At block 1206, process 1200 involves responsive to determining arhetorical relationship between the first elementary discourse unit andthe second elementary discourse unit, linking the first discourse treeand the second discourse tree via the rhetorical relationship, therebycreating an extended discourse tree. More specifically, discoursenavigation application 102 classifies a rhetorical relation for eachrhetorical link by forming a merging of text fragments, e.g., EDU(E_(i))and EDU(E_(j)), building its DT and using recognized relation label forthis rhetorical link.

In an aspect, discourse navigation application 102 combines the firstelementary discourse unit and the second elementary discourse unit intoa temporary paragraph. Discourse navigation application 102 thendetermines a rhetorical relationship between the first and secondelementary discourse units within the temporary paragraph by applyingdiscourse parsing to the temporary paragraph.

In a further aspect, responsive to not determining a rhetoricalrelationship, discourse navigation application 102 creates a defaultrhetorical relationship of type elaboration between the first elementarydiscourse unit and the second elementary discourse unit and links thefirst discourse tree and the second discourse tree.

In an aspect, discourse navigation application 102 performs automatedbuilding and categorizing of links between textual spans acrossdocuments. Here the following family of approaches can be used: lexicaldistance, lexical chains, information extraction, and linguistictemplate matching. Lexical distance can use a cosine similarity acrosspairs of sentences, and lexical chains can be more robust leveragingsynonymy and hypernymy.

Extended discourse trees can form relationships between two or moredocuments at different levels of granularity. For example, relationshipscan be determined between elementary discourse units, as described withrespect to process 1200. Additionally, extended discourse trees canrepresent relationships between words, sentences, paragraphs, sectionsof documents, or entire documents. As depicted, each individual graphconsists of smaller subgraphs for each individual document. Links areshown that represent logical connection between topics within a singledocument.

FIG. 13 also depicts relationships between textual units of documents atdifferent levels of granularity, in accordance with an aspect. FIG. 13depicts discourse trees 1301, 1302, and 1303, each corresponding to aseparate document. FIG. 13 also depicts various inter-document links,such as word link 1310 that links words in documents 1302 and 1303,paragraph/sentence link 1311 that links paragraphs or sentences indocuments 1301 and 1302, phrasal link 1312 that links phrases indocuments 1301 and 1303, and cross-document link 1313 that linksdocuments 1301 and 1303. Discourse navigation application 102 can uselinks 1310-1313 to navigate between documents 1301-1303.

Using Extended Discourse Trees for Navigation

Extended discourse trees such as those created by process 1200 can beused to navigate documents or other bodies of text. Extended discoursetrees enable different applications such as autonomous agents, improvedsearch and navigation, and question-answer coordination.

FIG. 14 depicts a flowchart of an example of a process 1400 for using anextended discourse tree to navigate between documents, in accordancewith an aspect.

At block 1401, method 1400 involves accessing an extended discourse treerepresenting multiple documents. As described with respect to process1200, an extended discourse tree can include a first discourse tree fora first document and a second discourse tree for a second document and aset of links between the documents representing rhetorical relations.

In an aspect, the documents can be responsive to a particular userquestion or query. Discourse navigation application 102 can perform asearch of a set of documents, database, or internet resource todetermine relevant documents. Additionally, discourse navigationapplication 102 can use the question or query as the first document anda document that includes an answer to the question or query as thesecond document.

At block 1402, method 1400 involves determining, from the extendeddiscourse tree, a first elementary discourse unit that is responsive toa query from a user device and a first position that corresponds to thefirst elementary discourse unit. Determining a first elementarydiscourse unit can involve matching one or more keywords from the queryin the first elementary discourse unit. For example, if a thresholdnumber of keywords in the query match an elementary discourse unit, thenthe elementary discourse unit is selected.

For example, discourse navigation application 102 receives a user query,e.g., “Atlanta.” Discourse navigation application 102 determines a firstelementary discourse unit that includes the entity “Atlanta.” Discoursenavigation application 102 then determines the associated positionwithin the first discourse tree. Position can be indicated by differentmeans such as a node number or an ordered pair that includes a documentidentifier and a paragraph identifier.

At block 1403, method 1400 involves determining, from the extendeddiscourse tree, a set of navigation options. The options can includerhetorical relations between elementary discourse units within adocument such as a first rhetorical relationship between the firstelementary discourse unit and a second elementary discourse unit of thefirst discourse tree. Options can also include rhetorical relationsbetween documents such as a second rhetorical relationship between thefirst elementary discourse unit of the first discourse tree and a thirdelementary discourse unit of the second discourse tree.

Continuing the above example, discourse navigation application 102determines that two options are available: one within the firstdiscourse tree that elaborates on “Atlanta,” e.g., “the Atlanta Braves”and another in the second discourse tree that includes furtherinformation on “Georgia Tech.”

At block 1404, method 1400 involves presenting the first and secondrhetorical relationships to a user device. Continuing the above,example, user device 170 presents “the Atlanta Braves,” and “GeorgiaTech,” to the user.

At block 1405, method 1400 involves responsive to (i) receiving, from auser device, a selection of the first rhetorical relationship,presenting the second elementary discourse unit to the user device, or(ii) receiving, from the user device, a selection of the secondrhetorical relationship, presenting the third elementary discourse unitto the user device.

Continuing the above example, user device 170 receives a selection of“Georgia Tech,” and in response, discourse navigation application 102provides the elementary discourse unit corresponding to “Georgia Tech,”e.g., “Georgia Tech is a research university in Atlanta,” to user device170.

In an aspect, discourse navigation application 102 uses the selectedresult to perform further analysis. For example, based on the selectionof “Georgia Tech,” discourse navigation application can search forentities related to “Georgia Tech” in one or more documents or searchfor additional documents to analyze and optionally integrate into theextended discourse tree.

Applications of Extended Discourse Trees to Autonomous Agents

Autonomous agents are designed to imitate human intellectual activitymaintaining a dialogue. Agents can operate in an iterative manner toprovide efficient and effective information for users. Existingsolutions for implementing autonomous agents, including those that usedeep learning of word sequences in dialogs, attempt to build a plausiblesequence of words to respond to a user query. In contrast, certainaspects described herein use extended discourse trees to enable an agentto guide a user to navigate to an appropriate answer as fast aspossible.

For example, if a user formulates the following query “Can I pay withone credit card for another,” the agent attempts to recognize userintent and a background knowledge about this user to establish a propercontext. For example, an individual may wish to pay with one credit cardfor another to avoid late payment fee when cash is unavailable. Insteadof giving answers in the form of snippets with links to relevant webpages to this question like major search engines do, certain aspectsprovide topics of answers for a user to choose from. Such topics gives auser a chance to assess how his request was understood on one hand andwhat are the knowledge area associated with her question on the otherhand. In our examples, topics include “balance transfer”, “using fundson a checking account”, or “canceling your credit card.” A user isprompted to select a clarification option, drill into either of theseoptions, or decline all options and request a new set of topics whichthe agent can identify.

Using extended discourse trees, discourse navigation application 102 canstart with the root node of a discourse tree that represents a sectionof text that matches the user query most closely. Then, discoursenavigation application 102 builds a set of possible topics by extractingphrases from elementary discourse units which are satellites of the rootnode of the discourse tree. If the user accepts a given topic, thenavigation continues along the chosen edge of the graph. Otherwise, ifno topic covers the user interest, discourse navigation application 102navigates backward in the extended discourse tree and proceeds toanother other section or another document that matched the original userquery.

FIG. 15 depicts an example of an autonomous agent using an extendeddiscourse tree to answer user questions, in accordance with an aspect.FIG. 15 depicts chat window 1500, which includes messages 1501-1506.Messages 1501, 1503, and 1505 are sent by user device 170 and messages1502, 1504, and 1506 are sent by the autonomous agent implemented bydiscourse navigation application 102.

As can be seen, user device 170 initiates a conversation the agent bysending message 1501 that states “I am broke and out of money.” Theagent navigates an extended discourse tree, finds the topic in a firstdiscourse tree within the extended discourse tree, and determinesseveral topics that are responsive to message 1501.

As illustrated in message 1502, topics include “Is out of your financialreach,” “Bad decisions have consequences,” “What I learned from beingbroke,” “Life after broke,” “Suffering from breakup issues withdifferent guys,” “Cut your existing bills.” Each topic is determined bynavigating links in the extended discourse tree. Each topic can be inthe first discourse tree or another discourse tree, as the extendeddiscourse tree includes links between documents and within documents.

With message 1503, user device 170 selects the “cut bills” option fromthe options provided by the agent. Then, the agent provides user device170 with a paragraph of associated text. This process continues asillustrated by messages 1504-1506.

Applications of Extended Discourse Trees to Search and ContentExploration

On the web, information is usually represented in web pages anddocuments, with certain section structure. Answering questions, formingtopics of candidate answers and attempting to provide an answer based onuser selected topic are the operations which can be represented with thehelp of a structure which includes discourse trees of texts involved.When a certain portion of text is suggested to a user as an answer, thisuser might want to drill in something more specific, ascend to a moregeneral level of knowledge or make a side move to a topic at the samelevel. These user intents of navigating from one portion of text toanother can be represented as coordinate or subordinate discourserelations between these portions.

Aspects of the present disclosure improve access times for web-basedsearch. For example, aspects can dynamically organize chunks of textfrom various webpages and documents into a tree form so that dependingon user's choice the system navigates to the intended terminal leaf ofthis tree as fast as possible. Additionally, if a user describes herproblem in multiple sentences, the autonomous agent attempts to addressthis problem by finding an answer whose rhetoric structure iscoordinated with that of the questions. By doing that, the agent isproviding answers not only about the entities from questions but alsomatching logical inter-relationships between them.

Content Exploration

In an aspect, extended discourse trees are used to facilitate contentexploration. In an example, user device 170 receives a question from auser “What is faceted search?” The user desires to understand howfaceted search operates and therefore would like to become fluent withother associated concepts.

In response, discourse navigation application 102 provides furthercontent exploration or search options. Discourse navigation application102 determines a relevant set of documents by forming an extendeddiscourse tree.

FIG. 16 depicts an example of an extended discourse tree, in accordancewith an aspect. FIG. 16 depicts extended discourse tree 1600, whichincludes discourse trees 1602, 1603, and 1604. Each discourse tree1602-1604 is created from a specific paragraph of text. In this example,discourse navigation application 102 creates individual discourse trees1602-1604 from different paragraphs of text. However, different sizeunits of text are possible such as sentences or multiple paragraphs.

More specifically, discourse navigation application 102 createsdiscourse tree 1603 from the following text that relates to the topic offaceted search: “Facets correspond to properties of the informationelements. They are often derived by analysis of the text of an itemusing entity extraction techniques or from pre-existing fields in adatabase such as author, descriptor, language, and format. Thus,existing web-pages, product descriptions or online collections ofarticles can be augmented with navigational facets.”

Additionally, discourse navigation application 102 creates discoursetree 1602 from the following text that also relates to the topic offaceted search: “Within the academic community, faceted search hasattracted interest primarily among library and information scienceresearchers, but there is a limited interest of computer scienceresearchers specializing in information retrieval.”

Discourse navigation application 102 creates discourse tree 1604 fromthe following text that relates to the topic of entity extraction:“Entity extraction, also known as entity name extraction or named entityrecognition, is an information retrieval technique that refers to theprocess of identifying and classifying key elements from text intopre-defined categories.”

From the created discourse trees, discourse navigation application 102identifies the following additional entities for content exploration:(1) entity extraction, (2) information retrieval, (3) pre-existingfields in a database, and (4) augmented with navigational facets. Morespecifically, discourse navigation application 102 determines that theseentities are related by elaboration relations and creates links1620-1623. Information retrieval, represented by node 1611, elaborateson faceted search, represented by node 1610, therefore link 1620connects nodes 1610 and 1611. Entity extraction, represented by node1613 elaborates on faceted search, represented by node 1612, thereforelink 1621 connects nodes 1612 and 1613. Information retrieval,represented by node 1615, elaborates on entity extraction, node 1614,therefore link 1623 relates connects nodes 1614 and 1615. Finally,discourse navigation application 102 that discourse tree 1615 elaborateson entity extraction, therefore discourse navigation application 102creates an inter-discourse tree link 1622 that connects nodes 1613 and1615.

Discourse navigation application 102 provides the entities to userdevice 170. User device 170 provides the entities to a user, who caneither follow a link to land on a single piece of information or run anew search to get to multiple search results to choose from. Forexample, starting at “faceted search,” user device 170 can navigate toinformation retrieval (e.g., via link 1620 to node 1611), entityextraction (e.g., via link 1621 from node 1612 to node 1613), toinformation retrieval (via link 1622), or to further information oninformation retrieval (via link 1623 to node 1615).

Creating Additional Extended Discourse Trees

Discourse navigation application 102 can construct additional extendeddiscourse trees from existing extended discourse trees. Morespecifically, by using machine learning model 120, discourse navigationapplication 102 can create an extended discourse tree based on discoursetrees for text that is in a first domain (e.g., engineering) by using aset of extended discourse trees for text that is in a second domain(e.g., law).

In an example process, discourse navigation application 102 accesses afirst discourse tree representing a first document of a set of documentsand a second discourse tree representing a second document from the setof documents.

Continuing the example, the discourse navigation application 102 obtainsa reference extended discourse tree from a set of extended discoursetrees by applying the first discourse tree and the second discourse treeto a trained classification mode, e.g., machine learning model 120. Theset of extended discourse trees includes multiple extended discoursetrees created by a process such as process 1200. More specifically, theclassification model iterates through the set of extended discoursetrees to identify a first candidate discourse tree and a secondcandidate discourse tree. The classification model identifies the firstcandidate discourse tree and the second candidate discourse tree as abest match for the first discourse tree and the second discourse tree.The classification model can use different models such as classifiers ornearest neighbor, etc.

Continuing the example, the discourse navigation application 102determines, from the reference extended discourse tree, one or morelinks between the first reference discourse tree and the secondreference discourse tree. Links can be determined by using process 1200(e.g., block 1206). The discourse navigation application 102 thenpropagates the links to the first discourse tree and the seconddiscourse tree, thereby creating an extended discourse tree. In thismanner, discourse navigation application 102 has created an extendeddiscourse tree by identifying an extended discourse tree that includesdiscourse trees that are similar to the first and second discourse treeand then by generating appropriate inter-discourse tree links.

Datasets for Evaluation

We experiment with the TREC datasets of the Web 2009 (queries 1-50) andWeb 2010 (queries 51-100) tracks, that contain collectively 100 queriesand their relevance assessments on the Clueweb09 cat. B dataset2(50,220,423 web pages in English crawled between January and February2009). We choose these datasets because they are used widely in thecommunity, allowing comparisons with state-of-the-art. We remove spamusing the spam rankings of Cormack et al. with the recommended settingof percentile score <70 indicating spam3. We consider a subset of thiscollection, consisting of the top 1000 documents that have beenretrieved in response to each query by the baseline retrieval model ontuned settings (described in section 4.1.2) using the Indri IR system.

We formed a dataset of Q/A pairs related to car repair recommendations.These pairs were extracted from dialogues as first and second utterance,so that the question is seven—fifteen keywords and answer is three tosix sentences. This resource was obtained to train a dialog supportsystem but it also proved to be useful to evaluate search. This datasetis scraped from (CarPros 2017) and is available at (Github Car RepairDataset 2017).

Answer (Webscope 2017) is a set of question-answer pairs with broadtopics. Out of the set of 140 k user questions we selected 3300 ofthose, which included three to five sentences. Answers for mostquestions are fairly detailed so no filtering by sentence length wasapplied to answers.

Our social media dataset includes the Request-Response pairs mainly frompostings on Facebook. We also used a smaller portion of LinkedIn.com andvk.com conversations related to employment. In the social domains thestandards of writing are fairly low. The cohesiveness of text is verylimited and the logical structure and relevance frequently absent. Theauthors formed the training sets from their own accounts and also publicFacebook accounts available via API over a number of years (at the timeof writing Facebook API for getting messages is unavailable). Inaddition, we used 860 email threads from Enron dataset (Cohen 2016).Also, we collected the data of manual responses to postings of an agentwhich automatically generates posts on behalf of human users-hosts(Galitsky et al 2014). We formed 4000 pairs from the various socialnetwork sources.

We form the dataset of financial questions scraped from Fidelity.com.This dataset would demonstrate how search relevance improvement mayoccur in a vertical domain with a reasonable coverage. We compared theefficiency of information access using the proposed chat bot incomparison with a major web search engines such as Google, for thequeries where both systems have relevant answers. For a search engines,misses are search results preceding the one relevant for a given user.For a chat bot, misses are answers which causes a user to chose otheroptions suggested by the chatbot, or request other topics.

The topics of question included personal finance. Twelve users (author'scolleagues) asked the chatbot 15-20 questions reflecting their financialsituations, and stopped when they were either satisfied with an answeror dissatisfied and gave up. The same questions were sent to Google, andevaluators had to click on each search results snippet to get thedocument or a webpage and decide on whether they can be satisfied withit.

The structure of comparison of search efficiency for the chat bot vs thesearch engine is shown in FIG. 4. Top portion of arrows shows that allsearch results (on the left) are used to form a list of topics forclarification. The arrow on the bottom shows that the bottom answerended up being selected by the chat bot based on two rounds of userfeedback and clarifications.

FIG. 17 depicts a comparison between navigation using a search engineand navigation using an autonomous agent enabled with extended discoursetrees, in accordance with an aspect. FIG. 17 depicts comparison 1700,which includes question 1701 presented to a search engine, results1702-1705 gathered in response to the search, interactions 1701-1706between user, and autonomous agent. The arrows show how multiple searchresults on distinct topics converged into a single clarification requestenumerating automatically extracted topics.

Instead of looking into all search results to find the relevant one(using a search engine, on the left), a user answers a clarificationrequest composed by the chatbot and drills into his topic of interest(on the right). The arrows show how multiple search results on distincttopics are converged into a single clarification request enumeratingautomatically extracted topics. A selected topic would then navigate auser to a new document or a new section of the same document.

TABLE 4 Comparison of the time spent and a number of iterations for thechat bot of this demo proposal and Google search in the domain ofpersonal finance. Parameter/ Conventional web search engine search Chatbot Average time to satisfactory 45.3 58.1 search result, sec Averagetime of unsatisfactory 65.2 60.5 search session (ended in giving up andstarting a new search,) sec Average number of iterations 5.2 4.4 tosatisfactory search result Average number of iterations to 7.2 5.6unsatisfactory search result

One can observe in Table 4 that the chat bot's time of knowledgeexploration session is longer than search engines'. Although it mightseem to be less beneficial for users, businesses prefer users to staylonger on their websites, since the chance of user acquisition grows.Spending 7% more time on reading chatbot answers is expected to allow auser to better familiarize himself with a domain, especially when theseanswers follow the selections of this user. The number of steps of anexploration session for chatbot is a quarter of what is required by asearch engine. Traditional ways to measure search engine performancesuch as MAP and NDCG are also applicable for a comparison betweenconventional search engines and chat bots with respect to efficiency ofinformation access (Sakai 2007). We conclude that using a chat bot withextended discourse tree-driven navigation is an efficient and fruitfulway of information access, in comparison with conventional searchengines and chat bots focused on imitation of a human intellectualactivity.

FIG. 18 depicts a simplified diagram of a distributed system 1800 forimplementing one of the aspects. In the illustrated aspect, distributedsystem 1800 includes one or more client computing devices 1802, 1804,1806, and 1808, which are configured to execute and operate a clientapplication such as a web browser, proprietary client (e.g., OracleForms), or the like over one or more network(s) 1810. Server 1812 may becommunicatively coupled with remote client computing devices 1802, 1804,1806, and 1808 via network 1810.

In various aspects, server 1812 may be adapted to run one or moreservices or software applications provided by one or more of thecomponents of the system. The services or software applications caninclude non-virtual and virtual environments. Virtual environments caninclude those used for virtual events, tradeshows, simulators,classrooms, shopping exchanges, and enterprises, whether two- orthree-dimensional (3D) representations, page-based logical environments,or otherwise. In some aspects, these services may be offered asweb-based or cloud services or under a Software as a Service (SaaS)model to the users of client computing devices 1802, 1804, 1806, and/or1808. Users operating client computing devices 1802, 1804, 1806, and/or1808 may in turn utilize one or more client applications to interactwith server 1812 to utilize the services provided by these components.

In the configuration depicted in the figure, the software components1818, 1820 and 1822 of distributed system 1800 are shown as beingimplemented on server 1812. In other aspects, one or more of thecomponents of distributed system 1800 and/or the services provided bythese components may also be implemented by one or more of the clientcomputing devices 1802, 1804, 1806, and/or 1808. Users operating theclient computing devices may then utilize one or more clientapplications to use the services provided by these components. Thesecomponents may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software, orcombinations thereof. It should be appreciated that various differentsystem configurations are possible, which may be different fromdistributed system 1800. The aspect shown in the figure is thus oneexample of a distributed system for implementing an aspect system and isnot intended to be limiting.

Client computing devices 1802, 1804, 1806, and/or 1808 may be portablehandheld devices (e.g., an iPhone®, cellular telephone, an iPad®,computing tablet, a personal digital assistant (PDA)) or wearabledevices (e.g., a Google Glass® head mounted display), running softwaresuch as Microsoft Windows Mobile®, and/or a variety of mobile operatingsystems such as iOS, Windows Phone, Android, BlackBerry 10, Palm OS, andthe like, and being Internet, e-mail, short message service (SMS),Blackberry®, or other communication protocol enabled. The clientcomputing devices can be general purpose personal computers including,by way of example, personal computers and/or laptop computers runningvarious versions of Microsoft Windows®, Apple Macintosh®, and/or Linuxoperating systems. The client computing devices can be workstationcomputers running any of a variety of commercially-available UNIX® orUNIX-like operating systems, including without limitation the variety ofGNU/Linux operating systems, such as for example, Google Chrome OS.Alternatively, or in addition, client computing devices 1802, 1804,1806, and 1808 may be any other electronic device, such as a thin-clientcomputer, an Internet-enabled gaming system (e.g., a Microsoft Xboxgaming console with or without a Kinect® gesture input device), and/or apersonal messaging device, capable of communicating over network(s)1810.

Although exemplary distributed system 1800 is shown with four clientcomputing devices, any number of client computing devices may besupported. Other devices, such as devices with sensors, etc., mayinteract with server 1812.

Network(s) 1810 in distributed system 1800 may be any type of networkfamiliar to those skilled in the art that can support datacommunications using any of a variety of commercially-availableprotocols, including without limitation TCP/IP (transmission controlprotocol/Internet protocol), SNA (systems network architecture), IPX(Internet packet exchange), AppleTalk, and the like. Merely by way ofexample, network(s) 1810 can be a local area network (LAN), such as onebased on Ethernet, Token-Ring and/or the like. Network(s) 1810 can be awide-area network and the Internet. It can include a virtual network,including without limitation a virtual private network (VPN), anintranet, an extranet, a public switched telephone network (PSTN), aninfra-red network, a wireless network (e.g., a network operating underany of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics (IEEE) 802.18 suiteof protocols, Bluetooth®, and/or any other wireless protocol); and/orany combination of these and/or other networks.

Server 1812 may be composed of one or more general purpose computers,specialized server computers (including, by way of example, PC (personalcomputer) servers, UNIX® servers, mid-range servers, mainframecomputers, rack-mounted servers, etc.), server farms, server clusters,or any other appropriate arrangement and/or combination. Server 1812 caninclude one or more virtual machines running virtual operating systems,or other computing architectures involving virtualization. One or moreflexible pools of logical storage devices can be virtualized to maintainvirtual storage devices for the server. Virtual networks can becontrolled by server 1812 using software defined networking. In variousaspects, server 1812 may be adapted to run one or more services orsoftware applications described in the foregoing disclosure. Forexample, server 1812 may correspond to a server for performingprocessing described above according to an aspect of the presentdisclosure.

Server 1812 may run an operating system including any of those discussedabove, as well as any commercially available server operating system.Server 1812 may also run any of a variety of additional serverapplications and/or mid-tier applications, including HTTP (hypertexttransport protocol) servers, FTP (file transfer protocol) servers, CGI(common gateway interface) servers, JAVA® servers, database servers, andthe like. Exemplary database servers include without limitation thosecommercially available from Oracle, Microsoft, Sybase, IBM(International Business Machines), and the like.

In some implementations, server 1812 may include one or moreapplications to analyze and consolidate data feeds and/or event updatesreceived from users of client computing devices 1802, 1804, 1806, and1808. As an example, data feeds and/or event updates may include, butare not limited to, Twitter® feeds, Facebook® updates or real-timeupdates received from one or more third party information sources andcontinuous data streams, which may include real-time events related tosensor data applications, financial tickers, network performancemeasuring tools (e.g., network monitoring and traffic managementapplications), clickstream analysis tools, automobile trafficmonitoring, and the like. Server 1812 may also include one or moreapplications to display the data feeds and/or real-time events via oneor more display devices of client computing devices 1802, 1804, 1806,and 1808.

Distributed system 1800 may also include one or more databases 1814 and1816. Databases 1814 and 1816 may reside in a variety of locations. Byway of example, one or more of databases 1814 and 1816 may reside on anon-transitory storage medium local to (and/or resident in) server 1812.Alternatively, databases 1814 and 1816 may be remote from server 1812and in communication with server 1812 via a network-based or dedicatedconnection. In one set of aspects, databases 1814 and 1816 may reside ina storage-area network (SAN). Similarly, any necessary files forperforming the functions attributed to server 1812 may be stored locallyon server 1812 and/or remotely, as appropriate. In one set of aspects,databases 1814 and 1816 may include relational databases, such asdatabases provided by Oracle, that are adapted to store, update, andretrieve data in response to SQL-formatted commands.

FIG. 19 is a simplified block diagram of one or more components of asystem environment 1900 by which services provided by one or morecomponents of an aspect system may be offered as cloud services inaccordance with an aspect of the present disclosure. In the illustratedaspect, system environment 1900 includes one or more client computingdevices 1904, 1906, and 1908 that may be used by users to interact witha cloud infrastructure system 1902 that provides cloud services. Theclient computing devices may be configured to operate a clientapplication such as a web browser, a proprietary client application(e.g., Oracle Forms), or some other application, which may be used by auser of the client computing device to interact with cloudinfrastructure system 1902 to use services provided by cloudinfrastructure system 1902.

It should be appreciated that cloud infrastructure system 1902 depictedin the figure may have other components than those depicted. Further,the aspect shown in the figure is only one example of a cloudinfrastructure system that may incorporate an aspect of the invention.In some other aspects, cloud infrastructure system 1902 may have more orfewer components than shown in the figure, may combine two or morecomponents, or may have a different configuration or arrangement ofcomponents.

Client computing devices 1904, 1906, and 1908 may be devices similar tothose described above for 2802, 2804, 2806, and 2808.

Although exemplary system environment 1900 is shown with three clientcomputing devices, any number of client computing devices may besupported. Other devices such as devices with sensors, etc. may interactwith cloud infrastructure system 1902.

Network(s) 1910 may facilitate communications and exchange of databetween clients 1904, 1906, and 1908 and cloud infrastructure system1902. Each network may be any type of network familiar to those skilledin the art that can support data communications using any of a varietyof commercially-available protocols, including those described above fornetwork(s) 1910.

Cloud infrastructure system 1902 may comprise one or more computersand/or servers that may include those described above for server 1712.

In certain aspects, services provided by the cloud infrastructure systemmay include a host of services that are made available to users of thecloud infrastructure system on demand, such as online data storage andbackup solutions, Web-based e-mail services, hosted office suites anddocument collaboration services, database processing, managed technicalsupport services, and the like. Services provided by the cloudinfrastructure system can dynamically scale to meet the needs of itsusers. A specific instantiation of a service provided by cloudinfrastructure system is referred to herein as a “service instance.” Ingeneral, any service made available to a user via a communicationnetwork, such as the Internet, from a cloud service provider's system isreferred to as a “cloud service.” Typically, in a public cloudenvironment, servers and systems that make up the cloud serviceprovider's system are different from the customer's own on-premisesservers and systems. For example, a cloud service provider's system mayhost an application, and a user may, via a communication network such asthe Internet, on demand, order and use the application.

In some examples, a service in a computer network cloud infrastructuremay include protected computer network access to storage, a hosteddatabase, a hosted web server, a software application, or other serviceprovided by a cloud vendor to a user, or as otherwise known in the art.For example, a service can include password-protected access to remotestorage on the cloud through the Internet. As another example, a servicecan include a web service-based hosted relational database and ascript-language middleware engine for private use by a networkeddeveloper. As another example, a service can include access to an emailsoftware application hosted on a cloud vendor's web site.

In certain aspects, cloud infrastructure system 1902 may include a suiteof applications, middleware, and database service offerings that aredelivered to a customer in a self-service, subscription-based,elastically scalable, reliable, highly available, and secure manner. Anexample of such a cloud infrastructure system is the Oracle Public Cloudprovided by the present assignee.

Large volumes of data, sometimes referred to as big data, can be hostedand/or manipulated by the infrastructure system on many levels and atdifferent scales. Such data can include data sets that are so large andcomplex that it can be difficult to process using typical databasemanagement tools or traditional data processing applications. Forexample, terabytes of data may be difficult to store, retrieve, andprocess using personal computers or their rack-based counterparts. Suchsizes of data can be difficult to work with using most currentrelational database management systems and desktop statistics andvisualization packages. They can require massively parallel processingsoftware running thousands of server computers, beyond the structure ofcommonly used software tools, to capture, curate, manage, and processthe data within a tolerable elapsed time.

Extremely large data sets can be stored and manipulated by analysts andresearchers to visualize large amounts of data, detect trends, and/orotherwise interact with the data. Tens, hundreds, or thousands ofprocessors linked in parallel can act upon such data in order to presentit or simulate external forces on the data or what it represents. Thesedata sets can involve structured data, such as that organized in adatabase or otherwise according to a structured model, and/orunstructured data (e.g., emails, images, data blobs (binary largeobjects), web pages, complex event processing). By leveraging an abilityof an aspect to relatively quickly focus more (or fewer) computingresources upon an objective, the cloud infrastructure system may bebetter available to carry out tasks on large data sets based on demandfrom a business, government agency, research organization, privateindividual, group of like-minded individuals or organizations, or otherentity.

In various aspects, cloud infrastructure system 1902 may be adapted toautomatically provision, manage and track a customer's subscription toservices offered by cloud infrastructure system 1902. Cloudinfrastructure system 1902 may provide the cloud services via differentdeployment models. For example, services may be provided under a publiccloud model in which cloud infrastructure system 1902 is owned by anorganization selling cloud services (e.g., owned by Oracle) and theservices are made available to the general public or different industryenterprises. As another example, services may be provided under aprivate cloud model in which cloud infrastructure system 1902 isoperated solely for a single organization and may provide services forone or more entities within the organization. The cloud services mayalso be provided under a community cloud model in which cloudinfrastructure system 1902 and the services provided by cloudinfrastructure system 1902 are shared by several organizations in arelated community. The cloud services may also be provided under ahybrid cloud model, which is a combination of two or more differentmodels.

In some aspects, the services provided by cloud infrastructure system1902 may include one or more services provided under Software as aService (SaaS) category, Platform as a Service (PaaS) category,Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) category, or other categories ofservices including hybrid services. A customer, via a subscriptionorder, may order one or more services provided by cloud infrastructuresystem 1902. Cloud infrastructure system 1902 then performs processingto provide the services in the customer's subscription order.

In some aspects, the services provided by cloud infrastructure system1902 may include, without limitation, application services, platformservices and infrastructure services. In some examples, applicationservices may be provided by the cloud infrastructure system via a SaaSplatform. The SaaS platform may be configured to provide cloud servicesthat fall under the SaaS category. For example, the SaaS platform mayprovide capabilities to build and deliver a suite of on-demandapplications on an integrated development and deployment platform. TheSaaS platform may manage and control the underlying software andinfrastructure for providing the SaaS services. By utilizing theservices provided by the SaaS platform, customers can utilizeapplications executing on the cloud infrastructure system. Customers canacquire the application services without the need for customers topurchase separate licenses and support. Various different SaaS servicesmay be provided. Examples include, without limitation, services thatprovide solutions for sales performance management, enterpriseintegration, and business flexibility for large organizations.

In some aspects, platform services may be provided by the cloudinfrastructure system via a PaaS platform. The PaaS platform may beconfigured to provide cloud services that fall under the PaaS category.Examples of platform services may include without limitation servicesthat enable organizations (such as Oracle) to consolidate existingapplications on a shared, common architecture, as well as the ability tobuild new applications that leverage the shared services provided by theplatform. The PaaS platform may manage and control the underlyingsoftware and infrastructure for providing the PaaS services. Customerscan acquire the PaaS services provided by the cloud infrastructuresystem without the need for customers to purchase separate licenses andsupport. Examples of platform services include, without limitation,Oracle Java Cloud Service (JCS), Oracle Database Cloud Service (DBCS),and others.

By utilizing the services provided by the PaaS platform, customers canemploy programming languages and tools supported by the cloudinfrastructure system and also control the deployed services. In someaspects, platform services provided by the cloud infrastructure systemmay include database cloud services, middleware cloud services (e.g.,Oracle Fusion Middleware services), and Java cloud services. In oneaspect, database cloud services may support shared service deploymentmodels that enable organizations to pool database resources and offercustomers a Database as a Service in the form of a database cloud.Middleware cloud services may provide a platform for customers todevelop and deploy various business applications, and Java cloudservices may provide a platform for customers to deploy Javaapplications, in the cloud infrastructure system.

Various different infrastructure services may be provided by an IaaSplatform in the cloud infrastructure system. The infrastructure servicesfacilitate the management and control of the underlying computingresources, such as storage, networks, and other fundamental computingresources for customers utilizing services provided by the SaaS platformand the PaaS platform.

In certain aspects, cloud infrastructure system 1902 may also includeinfrastructure resources 1930 for providing the resources used toprovide various services to customers of the cloud infrastructuresystem. In one aspect, infrastructure resources 1930 may includepre-integrated and optimized combinations of hardware, such as servers,storage, and networking resources to execute the services provided bythe PaaS platform and the SaaS platform.

In some aspects, resources in cloud infrastructure system 1902 may beshared by multiple users and dynamically re-allocated per demand.Additionally, resources may be allocated to users in different timezones. For example, cloud infrastructure system 1930 may enable a firstset of users in a first time zone to utilize resources of the cloudinfrastructure system for a specified number of hours and then enablethe re-allocation of the same resources to another set of users locatedin a different time zone, thereby maximizing the utilization ofresources.

In certain aspects, a number of internal shared services 1932 may beprovided that are shared by different components or modules of cloudinfrastructure system 1902 and by the services provided by cloudinfrastructure system 1902. These internal shared services may include,without limitation, a security and identity service, an integrationservice, an enterprise repository service, an enterprise managerservice, a virus scanning and white list service, a high availability,backup and recovery service, service for enabling cloud support, anemail service, a notification service, a file transfer service, and thelike.

In certain aspects, cloud infrastructure system 1902 may providecomprehensive management of cloud services (e.g., SaaS, PaaS, and IaaSservices) in the cloud infrastructure system. In one aspect, cloudmanagement functionality may include capabilities for provisioning,managing and tracking a customer's subscription received by cloudinfrastructure system 1902, and the like.

In one aspect, as depicted in the figure, cloud management functionalitymay be provided by one or more modules, such as an order managementmodule 1919, an order orchestration module 1922, an order provisioningmodule 1924, an order management and monitoring module 1926, and anidentity management module 1928. These modules may include or beprovided using one or more computers and/or servers, which may begeneral purpose computers, specialized server computers, server farms,server clusters, or any other appropriate arrangement and/orcombination.

In exemplary operation 1934, a customer using a client device, such asclient device 1904, 1906 or 1908, may interact with cloud infrastructuresystem 1902 by requesting one or more services provided by cloudinfrastructure system 1902 and placing an order for a subscription forone or more services offered by cloud infrastructure system 1902. Incertain aspects, the customer may access a cloud User Interface (UI),cloud UI 1919, cloud UI 1914 and/or cloud UI 1916 and place asubscription order via these UIs. The order information received bycloud infrastructure system 1902 in response to the customer placing anorder may include information identifying the customer and one or moreservices offered by the cloud infrastructure system 1902 that thecustomer intends to subscribe to.

After an order has been placed by the customer, the order information isreceived via the cloud UIs, 1919, 1914 and/or 1916.

At operation 1936, the order is stored in order database 1919. Orderdatabase 1919 can be one of several databases operated by cloudinfrastructure system 1919 and operated in conjunction with other systemelements.

At operation 1938, the order information is forwarded to an ordermanagement module 1919. In some instances, order management module 1919may be configured to perform billing and accounting functions related tothe order, such as verifying the order, and upon verification, bookingthe order.

At operation 1940, information regarding the order is communicated to anorder orchestration module 1922. Order orchestration module 1922 mayutilize the order information to orchestrate the provisioning ofservices and resources for the order placed by the customer. In someinstances, order orchestration module 1922 may orchestrate theprovisioning of resources to support the subscribed services using theservices of order provisioning module 1924.

In certain aspects, order orchestration module 1922 enables themanagement of business processes associated with each order and appliesbusiness logic to determine whether an order should proceed toprovisioning. At operation 1942, upon receiving an order for a newsubscription, order orchestration module 1922 sends a request to orderprovisioning module 1924 to allocate resources and configure thoseresources needed to fulfill the subscription order. Order provisioningmodule 1924 enables the allocation of resources for the services orderedby the customer. Order provisioning module 1924 provides a level ofabstraction between the cloud services provided by cloud infrastructuresystem 1900 and the physical implementation layer that is used toprovision the resources for providing the requested services. Orderorchestration module 1922 may thus be isolated from implementationdetails, such as whether or not services and resources are actuallyprovisioned on the fly or pre-provisioned and only allocated/assignedupon request.

At operation 1944, once the services and resources are provisioned, anotification of the provided service may be sent to customers on clientdevices 1904, 1906 and/or 1908 by order provisioning module 1924 ofcloud infrastructure system 1902.

At operation 1946, the customer's subscription order may be managed andtracked by an order management and monitoring module 1926. In someinstances, order management and monitoring module 1926 may be configuredto collect usage statistics for the services in the subscription order,such as the amount of storage used, the amount data transferred, thenumber of users, and the amount of system up time and system down time.

In certain aspects, cloud infrastructure system 1900 may include anidentity management module 1928. Identity management module 1928 may beconfigured to provide identity services, such as access management andauthorization services in cloud infrastructure system 1900. In someaspects, identity management module 1928 may control information aboutcustomers who wish to utilize the services provided by cloudinfrastructure system 1902. Such information can include informationthat authenticates the identities of such customers and information thatdescribes which actions those customers are authorized to performrelative to various system resources (e.g., files, directories,applications, communication ports, memory segments, etc.) Identitymanagement module 1928 may also include the management of descriptiveinformation about each customer and about how and by whom thatdescriptive information can be accessed and modified.

FIG. 20 illustrates an exemplary computer system 2000, in which variousaspects of the present invention may be implemented. The system 2000 maybe used to implement any of the computer systems described above. Asshown in the figure, computer system 2000 includes a processing unit2004 that communicates with a number of peripheral subsystems via a bussubsystem 2002. These peripheral subsystems may include a processingacceleration unit 2006, an I/O subsystem 2008, a storage subsystem 2018and a communications subsystem 2024. Storage subsystem 2018 includestangible computer-readable storage media 2022 and a system memory 2010.

Bus subsystem 2002 provides a mechanism for letting the variouscomponents and subsystems of computer system 2000 communicate with eachother as intended. Although bus subsystem 2002 is shown schematically asa single bus, alternative aspects of the bus subsystem may utilizemultiple buses. Bus subsystem 2002 may be any of several types of busstructures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheralbus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. Forexample, such architectures may include an Industry StandardArchitecture (ISA) bus, Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus, EnhancedISA (EISA) bus, Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) localbus, and Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, which can beimplemented as a Mezzanine bus manufactured to the IEEE P2086.1standard.

Processing unit 2004, which can be implemented as one or more integratedcircuits (e.g., a conventional microprocessor or microcontroller),controls the operation of computer system 2000. One or more processorsmay be included in processing unit 2004. These processors may includesingle core or multicore processors. In certain aspects, processing unit2004 may be implemented as one or more independent processing units 2032and/or 2034 with single or multicore processors included in eachprocessing unit. In other aspects, processing unit 2004 may also beimplemented as a quad-core processing unit formed by integrating twodual-core processors into a single chip.

In various aspects, processing unit 2004 can execute a variety ofprograms in response to program code and can maintain multipleconcurrently executing programs or processes. At any given time, some orall of the program code to be executed can be resident in processor(s)2004 and/or in storage subsystem 2018. Through suitable programming,processor(s) 2004 can provide various functionalities described above.Computer system 2000 may additionally include a processing accelerationunit 2006, which can include a digital signal processor (DSP), aspecial-purpose processor, and/or the like.

I/O subsystem 2008 may include user interface input devices and userinterface output devices. User interface input devices may include akeyboard, pointing devices such as a mouse or trackball, a touchpad ortouch screen incorporated into a display, a scroll wheel, a click wheel,a dial, a button, a switch, a keypad, audio input devices with voicecommand recognition systems, microphones, and other types of inputdevices. User interface input devices may include, for example, motionsensing and/or gesture recognition devices such as the Microsoft Kinect®motion sensor that enables users to control and interact with an inputdevice, such as the Microsoft Xbox® 360 game controller, through anatural user interface using gestures and spoken commands. Userinterface input devices may also include eye gesture recognition devicessuch as the Google Glass® blink detector that detects eye activity(e.g., ‘blinking’ while taking pictures and/or making a menu selection)from users and transforms the eye gestures as input into an input device(e.g., Google Glass®). Additionally, user interface input devices mayinclude voice recognition sensing devices that enable users to interactwith voice recognition systems (e.g., Siri® navigator), through voicecommands.

User interface input devices may also include, without limitation, threedimensional (3D) mice, joysticks or pointing sticks, gamepads andgraphic tablets, and audio/visual devices such as speakers, digitalcameras, digital camcorders, portable media players, webcams, imagescanners, fingerprint scanners, barcode reader 3D scanners, 3D printers,laser rangefinders, and eye gaze tracking devices. Additionally, userinterface input devices may include, for example, medical imaging inputdevices such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging,position emission tomography, medical ultrasonography devices. Userinterface input devices may also include, for example, audio inputdevices such as MIDI keyboards, digital musical instruments and thelike.

User interface output devices may include a display subsystem, indicatorlights, or non-visual displays such as audio output devices, etc. Thedisplay subsystem may be a cathode ray tube (CRT), a flat-panel device,such as that using a liquid crystal display (LCD) or plasma display, aprojection device, a touch screen, and the like. In general, use of theterm “output device” is intended to include all possible types ofdevices and mechanisms for outputting information from computer system2000 to a user or other computer. For example, user interface outputdevices may include, without limitation, a variety of display devicesthat visually convey text, graphics and audio/video information such asmonitors, printers, speakers, headphones, automotive navigation systems,plotters, voice output devices, and modems.

Computer system 2000 may comprise a storage subsystem 2018 thatcomprises software elements, shown as being currently located within asystem memory 2010. System memory 2010 may store program instructionsthat are loadable and executable on processing unit 2004, as well asdata generated during the execution of these programs.

Depending on the configuration and type of computer system 2000, systemmemory 2010 may be volatile (such as random access memory (RAM)) and/ornon-volatile (such as read-only memory (ROM), flash memory, etc.) TheRAM typically contains data and/or program modules that are immediatelyaccessible to and/or presently being operated and executed by processingunit 2004. In some implementations, system memory 2010 may includemultiple different types of memory, such as static random access memory(SRAM) or dynamic random access memory (DRAM). In some implementations,a basic input/output system (BIOS), containing the basic routines thathelp to transfer information between elements within computer system2000, such as during start-up, may typically be stored in the ROM. Byway of example, and not limitation, system memory 2010 also illustratesapplication programs 2012, which may include client applications, Webbrowsers, mid-tier applications, relational database management systems(RDBMS), etc., program data 2014, and an operating system 2016. By wayof example, operating system 2016 may include various versions ofMicrosoft Windows®, Apple Macintosh®, and/or Linux operating systems, avariety of commercially-available UNIX® or UNIX-like operating systems(including without limitation the variety of GNU/Linux operatingsystems, the Google Chrome® OS, and the like) and/or mobile operatingsystems such as iOS, Windows® Phone, Android® OS, BlackBerry® 10 OS, andPalm® OS operating systems.

Storage subsystem 2018 may also provide a tangible computer-readablestorage medium for storing the basic programming and data constructsthat provide the functionality of some aspects. Software (programs, codemodules, instructions) that when executed by a processor provide thefunctionality described above may be stored in storage subsystem 2018.These software modules or instructions may be executed by processingunit 2004. Storage subsystem 2018 may also provide a repository forstoring data used in accordance with the present invention.

Storage subsystem 2000 may also include a computer-readable storagemedia reader 2020 that can further be connected to computer-readablestorage media 2022. Together and, optionally, in combination with systemmemory 2010, computer-readable storage media 2022 may comprehensivelyrepresent remote, local, fixed, and/or removable storage devices plusstorage media for temporarily and/or more permanently containing,storing, transmitting, and retrieving computer-readable information.

Computer-readable storage media 2022 containing code, or portions ofcode, can also include any appropriate media known or used in the art,including storage media and communication media, such as but not limitedto, volatile and non-volatile, removable and non-removable mediaimplemented in any method or technology for storage and/or transmissionof information. This can include tangible, non-transitorycomputer-readable storage media such as RAM, ROM, electronicallyerasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory or other memorytechnology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disk (DVD), or other opticalstorage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage orother magnetic storage devices, or other tangible computer readablemedia. When specified, this can also include nontangible, transitorycomputer-readable media, such as data signals, data transmissions, orany other medium which can be used to transmit the desired informationand which can be accessed by computing system 2000.

By way of example, computer-readable storage media 2022 may include ahard disk drive that reads from or writes to non-removable, nonvolatilemagnetic media, a magnetic disk drive that reads from or writes to aremovable, nonvolatile magnetic disk, and an optical disk drive thatreads from or writes to a removable, nonvolatile optical disk such as aCD ROM, DVD, and Blu-Ray® disk, or other optical media.Computer-readable storage media 2022 may include, but is not limited to,Zip® drives, flash memory cards, universal serial bus (USB) flashdrives, secure digital (SD) cards, DVD disks, digital video tape, andthe like. Computer-readable storage media 2022 may also include,solid-state drives (SSD) based on non-volatile memory such asflash-memory based SSDs, enterprise flash drives, solid state ROM, andthe like, SSDs based on volatile memory such as solid state RAM, dynamicRAM, static RAM, DRAM-based SSDs, magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) SSDs, andhybrid SSDs that use a combination of DRAM and flash memory based SSDs.The disk drives and their associated computer-readable media may providenon-volatile storage of computer-readable instructions, data structures,program modules, and other data for computer system 2000.

Communications subsystem 2024 provides an interface to other computersystems and networks. Communications subsystem 2024 serves as aninterface for receiving data from and transmitting data to other systemsfrom computer system 2000. For example, communications subsystem 2024may enable computer system 2000 to connect to one or more devices viathe Internet. In some aspects, communications subsystem 2024 can includeradio frequency (RF) transceiver components for accessing wireless voiceand/or data networks (e.g., using cellular telephone technology,advanced data network technology, such as 3G, 4G or EDGE (enhanced datarates for global evolution), WiFi (IEEE 802.28 family standards, orother mobile communication technologies, or any combination thereof),global positioning system (GPS) receiver components, and/or othercomponents. In some aspects, communications subsystem 2024 can providewired network connectivity (e.g., Ethernet) in addition to or instead ofa wireless interface.

In some aspects, communications subsystem 2024 may also receive inputcommunication in the form of structured and/or unstructured data feeds2026, event streams 2028, event updates 2020, and the like on behalf ofone or more users who may use computer system 2000.

By way of example, communications subsystem 2024 may be configured toreceive unstructured data feeds 2026 in real-time from users of socialmedia networks and/or other communication services such as Twitter®feeds, Facebook® updates, web feeds such as Rich Site Summary (RSS)feeds, and/or real-time updates from one or more third party informationsources.

Additionally, communications subsystem 2024 may also be configured toreceive data in the form of continuous data streams, which may includeevent streams 2028 of real-time events and/or event updates 2020, thatmay be continuous or unbounded in nature with no explicit end. Examplesof applications that generate continuous data may include, for example,sensor data applications, financial tickers, network performancemeasuring tools (e.g. network monitoring and traffic managementapplications), clickstream analysis tools, automobile trafficmonitoring, and the like.

Communications subsystem 2024 may also be configured to output thestructured and/or unstructured data feeds 2026, event streams 2028,event updates 2020, and the like to one or more databases that may be incommunication with one or more streaming data source computers coupledto computer system 2000.

Computer system 2000 can be one of various types, including a handheldportable device (e.g., an iPhone® cellular phone, an iPad® computingtablet, a PDA), a wearable device (e.g., a Google Glass® head mounteddisplay), a PC, a workstation, a mainframe, a kiosk, a server rack, orany other data processing system.

Due to the ever-changing nature of computers and networks, thedescription of computer system 2000 depicted in the figure is intendedonly as a specific example. Many other configurations having more orfewer components than the system depicted in the figure are possible.For example, customized hardware might also be used and/or particularelements might be implemented in hardware, firmware, software (includingapplets), or a combination. Further, connection to other computingdevices, such as network input/output devices, may be employed. Based onthe disclosure and teachings provided herein, a person of ordinary skillin the art will appreciate other ways and/or methods to implement thevarious aspects.

In the foregoing specification, aspects of the invention are describedwith reference to specific aspects thereof, but those skilled in the artwill recognize that the invention is not limited thereto. Variousfeatures and aspects of the above-described invention may be usedindividually or jointly. Further, aspects can be utilized in any numberof environments and applications beyond those described herein withoutdeparting from the broader spirit and scope of the specification. Thespecification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded asillustrative rather than restrictive.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method for navigating textusing an extended discourse tree, the method comprising: accessing anextended discourse tree representing a plurality of documents, whereinthe extended discourse tree comprises a first discourse tree for a firstdocument and a second discourse tree for a second document; determining,from the extended discourse tree, (i) a first elementary discourse unitthat is responsive to a query from a user device and (ii) a firstposition that corresponds to the first elementary discourse unit;determining, from the extended discourse tree, a set of navigationoptions comprising (i) a first rhetorical relationship between the firstelementary discourse unit and a second elementary discourse unit of thefirst discourse tree and (ii) a second rhetorical relationship betweenthe first elementary discourse unit and a third elementary discourseunit of the second discourse tree; presenting the first and secondrhetorical relationships to a user device; and responsive to (i)receiving, from a user device, a selection of the first rhetoricalrelationship, presenting the second elementary discourse unit to theuser device, or (ii) receiving, from the user device, a selection of thesecond rhetorical relationship, presenting the third elementarydiscourse unit to the user device.
 2. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, wherein each of the first discourse tree and the seconddiscourse tree comprises a plurality of nodes, wherein each nonterminalnode of the plurality of nodes represents a rhetorical relationship, andwherein each terminal node of the nodes of the respective discourse treeis associated with an elementary discourse unit.
 3. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising responsive toreceiving an additional query from the user device, determining anadditional elementary discourse unit that is responsive to theadditional query and presenting the additional elementary discourse unitto the user device.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1,wherein determining the first elementary discourse unit furthercomprises identifying the first elementary discourse unit in theextended discourse tree and matching one or more keywords from the queryin the first elementary discourse unit.
 5. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 1, wherein determining the first elementary discourseunit further comprises: generating a first parse tree for the query;generating additional parse trees for each of one or more elementarydiscourse units; and responsive to determining that one of theadditional parse trees includes the first parse tree, selecting theelementary discourse unit corresponding to the additional parse tree asthe first elementary discourse unit.
 6. The computer-implemented methodof claim 1, wherein each of the first and second rhetoricalrelationships are (i) elaboration, (ii) enablement, (iii) condition,(iv) contrast, or (v) attribution.
 7. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, wherein the first document comprises a first plurality ofelementary discourse units, the first discourse tree represents a firstrhetorical relationship between at least two of the first plurality ofelementary discourse units, the second document comprises a secondplurality of elementary discourse units, and the second discourse treerepresents a second rhetorical relationship between at least two of thesecond plurality of elementary discourse units.
 8. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the extended discoursetree comprises a link representing by a rhetorical relationship betweena common entity in the first discourse tree and the second discoursetree.
 9. A system comprising: a non-transitory computer-readable mediumstoring computer-executable program instructions; and a processingdevice communicatively coupled to the non-transitory computer-readablemedium for executing the computer-executable program instructions,wherein executing the computer-executable program instructionsconfigures the processing device to perform operations comprising:accessing an extended discourse tree representing a plurality ofdocuments, wherein the extended discourse tree comprises a firstdiscourse tree for a first document and a second discourse tree for asecond document; determining, from the extended discourse tree, (i) afirst elementary discourse unit that is responsive to a query from auser device and (ii) a first position that corresponds to the firstelementary discourse unit; determining, from the extended discoursetree, a set of navigation options comprising (i) a first rhetoricalrelationship between the first elementary discourse unit and a secondelementary discourse unit of the first discourse tree and (ii) a secondrhetorical relationship between the first elementary discourse unit anda third elementary discourse unit of the second discourse tree;presenting the first and second rhetorical relationships to a userdevice; and responsive to (i) receiving, from a user device, a selectionof the first rhetorical relationship, presenting the second elementarydiscourse unit to the user device, or (ii) receiving, from the userdevice, a selection of the second rhetorical relationship, presentingthe third elementary discourse unit to the user device.
 10. The systemof claim 9, wherein the operations further comprise responsive toreceiving, from the user device, an additional query, determining anadditional elementary discourse unit that is responsive to theadditional query and presenting the additional elementary discourse unitto the user device.
 11. The system of claim 9, wherein determining thefirst elementary discourse unit further comprises matching one or morekeywords from the query in the first elementary discourse unit.
 12. Thesystem of claim 9, wherein determining the first elementary discourseunit further comprises: generating a first parse tree for the query;generating additional parse trees for each of one or more elementarydiscourse units; and responsive to determining that one of theadditional parse trees includes the first parse tree, selecting theelementary discourse unit corresponding to the additional parse tree asthe first elementary discourse unit.
 13. The system of claim 9, whereineach of the first and second rhetorical relationships are (i)elaboration, (ii) enablement, (iii) condition, (iv) contrast, or (v)attribution.
 14. The system of claim 9, wherein the first documentcomprises a first plurality of elementary discourse units, the firstdiscourse tree represents a first rhetorical relationship between atleast two of the first plurality of elementary discourse units, thesecond document comprises a second plurality of elementary discourseunits, and the second discourse tree represents a second rhetoricalrelationship between at least two of the second plurality of elementarydiscourse units.
 15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storingcomputer-executable program instructions that when executed by aprocessor, perform operations comprising: accessing an extendeddiscourse tree representing a plurality of documents, wherein theextended discourse tree comprises a first discourse tree for a firstdocument and a second discourse tree for a second document; determining,from the extended discourse tree, (i) a first elementary discourse unitthat is responsive to a query from a user device and (ii) a firstposition that corresponds to the first elementary discourse unit;determining, from the extended discourse tree, a set of navigationoptions comprising (i) a first rhetorical relationship between the firstelementary discourse unit and a second elementary discourse unit of thefirst discourse tree and (ii) a second rhetorical relationship betweenthe first elementary discourse unit and a third elementary discourseunit of the second discourse tree; presenting the first and secondrhetorical relationships to a user device; and responsive to (i)receiving, from a user device, a selection of the first rhetoricalrelationship, presenting the second elementary discourse unit to theuser device, or (ii) receiving, from the user device, a selection of thesecond rhetorical relationship, presenting the third elementarydiscourse unit to the user device.
 16. The non-transitorycomputer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the operations furthercomprise responsive to receiving, from the user device, an additionalquery, determining an additional elementary discourse unit that isresponsive to the additional query and presenting the additionalelementary discourse unit to the user device.
 17. The non-transitorycomputer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein determining the firstelementary discourse unit further comprises identifying the firstelementary discourse unit in the extended discourse tree and matchingone or more keywords from the query in the first elementary discourseunit.
 18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15,wherein determining the first elementary discourse unit furthercomprises: generating a first parse tree for the query; generatingadditional parse trees for each of one or more elementary discourseunits; and responsive to determining that one of the additional parsetrees includes the first parse tree, selecting the elementary discourseunit corresponding to the additional parse tree as the first elementarydiscourse unit.
 19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim15, wherein each of the first and second rhetorical relationships are(i) elaboration, (ii) enablement, (iii) condition, (iv) contrast, or (v)attribution.
 20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim15, wherein the extended discourse tree comprises a link representing arhetorical relationship between a common entity in the first discoursetree and the second discourse tree.